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I mean, you can drop everything about Dyson spheres and the like and still appreciate "I would prefer the human race not to go extinct". The central arguments a

I mean, you can drop everything about Dyson spheres and the like and still appreciate "I would prefer the human race not to go extinct". The central arguments aren't about cryonics or anything, they're about "I would prefer the human race not to go extinct". To say those folks are "dismissive and generally not interested in technology" seems pretty wild, given those folks include Elon Musk, Bill Gates, the CEO of OpenAI, etc. - despite any flaws you might find with them, this is hardly a group known for being disinterested in tech.

PaulHoule 3y ago
As far as I know, those people (Musk, Gates, et. al) aren’t hanging about on Less Wrong. Sure, anti-capitalists impute great significance in Musk giving nearly $2M to a longtermist organization but for him that is like me giving 78 cents to a bum and getting blamed for the latest explosion at the homeless colony. If you don’t want mankind to go extinct I would recommend you look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Collective_Action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Collective_Action for some explanation why problems that could get solved never get solved. Civilizations don’t fail because they have problems, they fail because they can’t solve the problems in front of them. Some mash-up up of H.P. Lovecraft, Teilhard de Chardin, the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Scientology isn’t going to help.